Living a digital life with empty pockets

I’m cramming a lot into today’s post, peeps. Four group gifts, plus a very special newbie offer for female avatars less than 30 days old.

First up, let’s try and hurry Summer up with Exodi’s fabulous bikini and capris gifty! Exodi’s group costs 250L to join, and the gifts range from full skin packs to eyes to clothing. This group is a keeper, if you have some money to spare to join. Mar has teamed the Exodi gift with the new group gift from Baby Monkey (free to join) – the colour-change Kroko Pumps:

I see all of the search terms that lead people to this blog. By far and away the majority of them are looking for exactly what SL for Nowt offers: info on freebies in SL and help for newbies. Sometimes the occasional porn-like search term will slip through (I have, in the past, blogged about good-quality freebie naughty bits for the guys, so that’s only to be expected). However, one search term that cropped up recently, well… I’m going to be blunt: it pissed me off. It’s the one highlighted here (if you can get past giggling at the seventh one on the list) –

Mar is not, and never has been anything other than an account created to facilitate writing this blog. She has never even camped for money, let alone escorted. Hell, she doesn’t even own any prim naughty bits, okay? The only money that she has ever ‘earned’ was from money trees, for the first 29 days of her existence. After that, I gave my payment info to Linden Lab and she has paid her way upfront, thanks to my credit card.

And now I’ve cleared up any misconceptions about that, back to your regularly-scheduled freebie/cheapie-hunting and newbie-helping.

Okay, so you’ve tried all of my other tips and tricks for inventory management. You keep on top of deleting all those extra landmarks, posing stands, ‘how to use resize scripts’ notecards and the like, but your inventory is still out of control. Mine too, so I’m digging deeper now, and I’m going to tackle this latest issue one item at a time, beginning with one thing we ladies all love: shoes.

Oh my gosh, what a surprise awaited me when I checked the Library folder of my Inventory. Under ‘clothing’ and then ‘initial outfits’ are twelve new default avatars created by Adam n Eve. I tried on all the female options, and girls you need to look at them! If nothing else, the shoes and hair deserve places in your main folders, and some of the outfits are fabby, too! Guys, there are outfits for you, too, but you need to check those out yourselves; I didn’t have time to get around to them today.

Here’s a sample outfit: the Female Rocker. It comes with everything you see here, including two colours of t-shirt.

More and more large store groups are moving towards a pay-to-join policy, which I can only assume is partly to prevent people from joining the group, grabbing a group freebie, and then leaving the group again. The first stores to do this tended to be the skin stores, and understandably so, with skins being the price they are and many skin stores offering full fatpacks as gifts. More and more stores are opting for this method, and the gifts are usually well worth the join fee.

Today Mar is highlighting some gorgeous gifts from pay-to-join groups. Please be aware that you need to remain in these groups once you’ve paid to join. If you leave and want to re-join, you’ll have to pay again. (For a handy reminder of which groups you paid to join, either jot down the group names on the ‘My Notes’ tab of your own profile, or check the front page of the group’s info window. The join fee will be visible, but greyed-out.)

First up, a stunning skirt and layerable tank top set from Sn@tch VIP Group (L$300 to join, and one of the most fun group chats ever. You won’t get shouted at for talking in group chat, and things can get hilariously naughty sometimes. It’s one of my favourite groups for banter, as well as for Ivey’s fab clothing). This is a new departure for Sn@tch: sculpted skirts that move beautifully with the avatar (be aware that certain very twisted or bent-over poses might not work, but for the average AO these skirts will look great). The tanks are on several layers (some sheer, some less sheer, and there’s also a pink one I’ve not shown here) so you can layer up and mix and match. I adore this outfit, and I’ve teamed it with the free Adena hair in Swedish Blonde, from the fatpack at Amacci (pick ‘hair’ from the teleport pad at the landing point, and the freebie is on the wall to your right), plus a group gift skin from Tuli that I’ll get onto in a minute.

Hop behind the cut for three more pay-to-join group gifts; one of which is for the boys!

Weekends are busy times for me, because that’s when I can log in-world and rummage out some bargains for you. Today I have three beautiful frocks to showcase, plus a new free skin and a fatpack of free hair.

First up is this super-classy new group gift from Kunglers Fashion Design, which includes the necklace. The group has a L$50 join fee (make sure you remain in the group, because if you leave then you’ll have to pay again to re-join) and offers one outfit every month to its members. Mar has teamed it with free hair from the new Exile sample pack Micah in crimson. I’m afraid the shoes are not free (they were a bit of a splurge, for Mar, but they won’t be leaving her feet anytime soon!)

While I was at Baby Monkey, taking a snap of the Midnight Mania board there for my previous post, I noticed that Pixieplumb has put out three free sets of shoes. There are five pairs of classic flats, five pairs of classic pumps, and three pairs of classic mens’ loafers. I have no idea how long they’ll be available for, so run and grab ’em!

Well that’s the whole ethos of the Freebiesphere, I know, but there are many great ways of getting something for nothing in SL. Two of my favourites are Lucky Chairs (and, by extension, Lucky Boards) and Midnight Mania/Madness boards. For those new to SL, the workings of these things may be a bit puzzling (see my previous Q&A post where someone arrived at my blog on a search engine query ‘how to sit down and win in Second Life’) so here’s a quick tutorial about how these prize items work.

Every day I glance at the search engine terms that bring people to this blog, and sometimes I see questions that, when put together, would make an interesting blogpost: a kind of random Q&A. So that’s exactly what I did.

Here is the first set of questions from the past week (my stats cut the final parts of most questions off, but they’re usually fairly obvious). Every time I get enough new questions I’ll make another post like this one.

How to check if friend has removed you from their friends list?
Simple: their name will no longer show up on your friends list.

Where are skin files located in Second Life?
In the Body Parts folder of your inventory. However, if you have bought a skin (even if it’s a freebie) it may appear in its own folder underneath all the main folders in your inventory (and the folder could have any name). It’s a good habit, at the beginning of your Second Life, to organise your inventory as you go along, so moving that skin folder into your Body Parts folder would make sense ;)

How do I sit on a chair to win in Second Life?
This is called a Lucky Chair. Lucky Chairs (there are also Lucky Boards) have a prize (or prizes) loaded into them, and they display a letter of the alphabet (sometimes a number, or a question mark). The chair/board will display this random letter/number/question mark for a set length of time and then (assuming nobody wins) will change to a new one. Most chairs and boards will show how many minutes remain before the letter changes. You win if your first name begins with the same letter that’s on the chair/board. If the chair/board is displaying a question mark then it’s a ‘wildcard’ round and anyone can sit/click and win. Right-click on the chair and select ‘sit’, or left-click on the board, and you will win the prize. The chair/board will then change to a new letter. More info on lucky chairs, lucky boards, and also on Midnight Mania can be found here.
How do I retire my avatar in Second Life?
Log into secondlife.com using your avatar name and password, and go to your Account page (click the arrow to the right of ‘Account’ in the left-hand sidebar to expand it). From there, click Cancel Account.

Are all money trees for newbies only?
In the main, yes. I’ve not seen or heard of any that pay out to older accounts.

How to tell if a ‘female’ avatar is really a man?
I’m afraid you can’t. Voice-changing software is readily-availably and extremely convincing. In addition, many people portray a different gender in SL than their RL gender, and for many reasons. Insisting that someone ‘voices’ with you is no guarantee that what you hear is genuinely them, and insisting on webcam (which, since SL currently has no webcam facility, would need to be via an external application) may cause offence.

This month’s freebie from SF Design is a great shirt and argyle vest combination. I’m showing the ladies’ version, but boys, if you head into the menswear section you’ll find one in there for you, too!

Mar’s wearing the black pants from Yip’s Black and White Suit from the Gnubie Store, L$5 hair from ETD’s discount section, plus some fabulous (not free and way beyond this blog’s L$50 remit, but heck, I love ’em so I’m wearing ’em!) Toasty Heels from House of Curios. The skin is a current gift from LeLutka, but you won’t find it in group notices for much longer. (There are also some skins in the group’s notices that take advantage of the new Viewer 2’s alpha settings.) The earrings are sadly no longer available.

About

About SL for Nowt

So what is SL for Nowt all about? (Hey, that rhymed…)

Initially, I wanted to see if it was possible to create an entirely new avatar in the Second Life world, without putting in any money of my own. I planned to do this by picking money from money trees only. No camping (sitting on chairs/mopping floors/doing other activities that make an area look busy, in return for small amounts of cash), and definitely no begging! I set myself the goal of a minimum 50L$ per day from the money trees, and met this target on most days. I even exceeded it a lot on a few days. Along the way, I spotted (and screencaptured) many odd things, met some interesting people, got annoyed at the rudeness of ’some people’ and generally had a fun time.

The blog has now taken a different path, since my original goals have now been met. Now, SL for Nowt is all about finding freebies and cheapies, living a virtual existence in the Second Life world on the cheap, and helping out newbies as much as possible.

SL for Nowt has moved away from WordPress hosting, as I was unhappy with WordPress inserting ads into my content that I had no control over. It’s now self-hosted, so please hop over and pay a visit to the new blog!

Disclaimer

SL for Nowt is an entirely unofficial blogsite, and is not endorsed by Linden Research, Inc.